CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jul 26, 2023

Games Kids Play

I truly believe that some of the best contest methodologies can be traced back to 4th grade birthday parties.

Music Chairs For Taylor Swift

God Bless the Silly People. Like many stations, Kiss 102.3 in Albany has a trip to see Taylor Swift in a secret location in NYC. I begged and pleaded that they put it in the VIP Club, or have people like them on Myspace or register to win at Earl Scheib Autobody Painting (now with 18 metro locations), but they instead went with Musical Chairs.

Musical Chairs is great. WiLD in Tampa did it for a trip to the Grammys. Magic in Colorado Springs did it for a car. One of the CHR’s did it for a trip to the Super Bowl. When he was in Ft. Wayne, Phil Becker did it for a Bieber trip.

First Crack At Christmas

One of the Hubbard PD’s was doing a presentation last Wednesday and included were some photos from his morning guy’s parody calendar.

Calendars are the gift that say “I really don’t know you well enough to know what you like, so here is a calendar with photos of kittens.”

Radiowave in Windhoek did a calendar with clients and local celebrities in “perceived” staged of undress to sell to raise funds for the local SPCA.

And 93Q in Syracuse is soliciting shots for a pet costume calendar they’re going to put this December.

The Reaction Game

One of the things that has happened in Radio is that we’ve lost our speed. We over-think things.

Here is something I do when I do staff get-togethers. I call it The Reaction Game. Horrible name. But it does say it all. Very simple.

You break the room into four groups of equal numbers. Four or five people in a group.

You hand each group a card and on cue, they flip it over and read it. It’s 10:13 am on a Wednesday and…

• The mayor just got busted in a motel with a Cub Scout in lederhosen
• Your market just got the professional sports franchise it’s always wanted and worked for.
• A plane carrying the #1 artist on your station just crashed. That’s all we know.
• The biggest bridge in town just dropped into the river.

What do you do? Because you have about five minutes MAX to get on the air. Each group puts their heads together and comes up with a plan and announces it to the room. Rules go out the window when this stuff occurs.

Did this at a station and the sports franchise was going to be a hockey team, so the idea was to get a hockey rink organ player to do all their music live. Which was great. No such thing as a bad idea. Except when one of the stations was acknowledging a bridge collapse with pulling all the music and spots and the Sales Manager got up and said “Unh uh. We have client obligations…” She was asked to leave the room.

Do this exercise. It’s great for keeping the team on their toes.